Premium Pause? Approximately 100 Fire and Emergency Medical Services Personnel Haven't Received Pandemic Bonus
When President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act into law on March 11, 2021, it included over half a billion dollars in funding for the U.S. Virgin Islands. Roughly $40 million of that sum was dedicated to a program called Premium Pay, which sought to recognize the efforts of certain essential employees in the public and private sectors who had to serve the community during two lockdown periods declared by Governor Albert Bryan Jr. in 2020.
2023-02-09 16:34:54 - VI News Staff
By January 2022, the territory was in receipt of the majority of its $547 million allocation, and disbursement of Premium Pay checks was slated to begin in February. An income ceiling was announced - “If you make more than $70,000 you cannot qualify to receive any Premium Pay at all,” Director of the VI Office of Management and Budget Jenifer O’Neal, told Senator Kenneth Gittens, during a January 2022 hearing of the Senate Committee on Disaster Recovery and Infrastructure.
A few weeks later, Governor Bryan clarified to the Consortium that the $70,000 upper limit was with respect to annual base pay; he reassured that overtime earned that brought total compensation over that threshold would not preclude an otherwise eligible worker from receiving a Premium Pay check. “Even if you make $200,000 but your base pay is $50,000 you still qualify," the Governor said during an interview a year ago.
By the end of February, Governor Bryan said that because “cash was running slim,” distribution of these stimulus funds would be pushed back until the summer, and in June, checks duly began to roll out to recipients in the private healthcare sector, with public workers expected to follow. At the time, then-Senator Kurt Vialet expressed concern with the timeline within which public sector employees were going to receive their Premium Pay funds, during a hearing of the 34th Legislature’s Finance Committee, which he chaired. “